of Mary, and make him and his mother two gods besides Allah, as some of them in fact do. They worship Mary, calling upon her with the very same invocations by which they call upon Allah—glorified is He—and upon the Messiah, treating her as a deity just as they treat the Messiah as a deity. Thus they say, “O Mother of God, forgive us, have mercy on us,” and the like, requesting from her what they request from Allah, Mighty and Majestic.

Some among them even assert concerning Mary that she is the consort of Allah—exalted and far above that is He.

The reason they are driven to such a claim is that, in their doctrine, the Messiah is at once a complete human being and a complete god—a composite of humanity (nāsūt) and divinity (lāhūt). His humanity, they say, is from Mary, while his divinity is the primordial, eternal Word, which in their theology is the Creator itself.

Accordingly, the Messiah stands between two origins, humanity and divinity. If, in their view, the Father is God and the Word begotten of the Father is the Son of God, then it follows that when the divinity united with the humanity to become the Messiah, it coupled and was joined to it; and that coupling is precisely what is meant by a spousal relationship.

Just as they claim that this begetting is intellectual, not sensory, they likewise maintain that the coupling and “marriage” are intellectual, not sensory; for, according to them, the divinity coupled with Mary’s humanity and “married” it in an intellectual union, and from the two the Messiah was produced.

In their Creed they proclaim: “The Messiah was incarnate of Mary and of the Holy Spirit.” If they interpret the Holy Spirit to be Gabriel—as the Muslims say—then it is